`Spirit of Rett’ victorious on the salt

See`Spirit of Rett’The Spirit of Rett land-speed car will be featured at the ninth annual Classy Chassis Concours d’ Elegance, Saturday, June 9, and Sunday, June 10, at Reliant Stadium.

A golden land-speed car blazed across Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats in November 1965, achieving a record-shattering speed of 409.277 mph. For decades, this achievement by Bill and Bob Summers with their slippery-skinned “Goldenrod” held the Category A, Group II, Class 11 record.

It wasn’t until the morning of Sept. 21, 2010, the extraordinary feat of the legendary Goldenrod was bested by the “Spirit of Rett,” a naturally aspirated, wheel-driven streamliner that scorched the flats with a two-run average speed of 414.316 mph.

Piloted by Dallas businessman Charles Nearburg, the Spirit of Rett established the new World Land Speed Record under the power of a single gas engine and two-wheel drive — versus the Goldenrod, which was driven to its record run via the muscle of four unblown Chrysler Hemi engines and four-wheel-drive traction.

The Spirit of Rett is an extensively modified version of the streamliner originally designed by Howard Nafzger. It’s propelled by an unblown 1,650-horsepower 523-cubic-inch Reher-Morrison GM V-8 powerplant that runs on racing gasoline and “lots of nitrous oxide.”

“We’re really pushing the limits on what you can do with nitrous oxide,” Nearburg said.

The car he drove into the land-speed history books is named after his son, Rett, who died of cancer at age 21. “This record-breaking effort,” Nearburg said, “is dedicated to and all of the children fighting cancer. We loved doing the gear-head stuff together and we always talked about coming out here (to Bonneville), and I decided I’m going to do it.”

Nearburg has been in tune with Bonneville land-speed racing since his youth, and remembers, at age 15, the day Summers Brothers Racing set the World Land Speed Record.

(rett.org)

Along with trumping the Goldenrod’s record and becoming the fastest normally aspirated car in history, the Spirit of Rett boasts a list of record-topping feats: fastest single-engine car record in history; first and only unblown single-engine car to achieve more than 400 mph; first and only car to set two 300-plus-mph records in one day; first and only car to ever hold all four of the fastest unblown records at Bonneville at the same time; and the first and only car to hold the two fastest unblown FIA records at the same time.

Also, at the September 2011 Federation Internationale de l’Automobile Landspeed Shootout, the “Spirit of Rett” — powered by a 1,150-horsepower 483-cubic-inch V-8 — increased its Category A, Group II, Class 10 record to 366.59 mph.

“We’re really proud of the accomplishments,” Nearburg said. “We broke the record that’s been on the books 45 years – arguably if not the most significant land-speed record, at least one of two of them.”